Hypnotherapy, BlogHypfocus Therapies

Mindfulness - the little sister of Self-Hypnosis

Below is an extract from my March Newsletter: ​This month the topic is the effectiveness of Mindfulness and Hypnosis in managing Anxiety and Stress.

I used to be Anxious......Up until a few years ago my own life was limited by Anxiety. Anxiety and the anticipation of anxiety made me nervous about every day things like driving, socialising and asserting myself in the workplace. These days, thanks to a regular practice of Self-Hypnosis and Mindfulness I am able to manage my anxiety quite comfortably and while I still feel nervous if for example I need to speak in public thanks to Hypnotherapy and Mindfulness I can observe it rather than be engulfed by it and it therefore no longer limits me.

An unexpected adventure is a good test....As luck would have it I was involved in an incident last month which illustrates how far I've benefited from mindfulness, so I thought I'd share it with you here. On Friday the 10th of February I arrived at Dublin Airport in Ireland to check in for my 8:30am flight to Melbourne via Abu Dhabi. Check in was smooth sailing, short ques and efficient staff had us through the process promptly and when the time came the flight was boarded and on it's way without a hitch. Some 7 or so hours later we were preparing to land, it had been an uneventful flight and the time had passed quickly. I was sitting in the window seat, the seat next to me was empty and the aisle seat was occupied by a young man who was returning to Abu Dhabi to work after a few days break in Dublin. We were both reading the same book "I am Pilgrim" and the flight attendant had also just finished it so it had been a talking point at the beginning of the flight....

How Mindfulness Improves Your Wellbeing

​​This week I delivered a Mindfulness workshop for a school Conference in Balnarring which is on the Mornington Peninsula. It’s a stunning location and it was a very beautiful winter’s day, I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the experience.

One of the benefits of Mindfulness that I most enjoy is that it has taught me to be more aware of when I am experiencing something enjoyable; by being tuned in I’m able to increase and savour the enjoyment of the moment. Driving to Balnarring I was aware and appreciative of the bright blue winters sky, the glorious tree canopies along the country roads and the vast expanse of lush green countryside, I was aware of how great it felt to be able to be out in that environment and the sense of freedom that driving the open road conjures.

In times gone by I would probably have missed most of this because I would have seen the drive as simply something I had to do to get to my destination and I would have been more preoccupied with my upcoming presentation and how it would be received.

Life can too often be like that when you are not mindful, the focus swings like a pendulum into the future to consider what’s coming up and back into the past to review what’s been, and too often it skips past the present. The present moment is where all of the magical details of life are created, the feel of the sunshine on your skin, how that cool refreshing drink of water can make the body sigh with relief after some hard work, the delight on a child’s face when it’s engaged in a game of make-believe, how great it feels to kick off your shoes at the end of the day; the fact is that when you stay tuned in that you are far more likely to pick them up.

Being present in the moment is a habit that we need to cultivate so that we don’t miss the magic of life. The big celebrations and the significant sad events are the two extremes of life hence we tend to be jolted to take note of them. The difficult emotions to be processed around a sad or traumatic event can sometimes keep us stuck in a ruminating pattern if we don’t have the life skills or receive some help to process them. In big celebrations most of the joy is in the detail, and the detail can often be overlooked if we’re not mindful. Mindfulness teaches our brains to appreciate these wonderful details as well as to regulate the emotions related to and understand the transitory nature of difficult experiences.

Practicing mindfulness does not require that you clear your mind of thoughts, but rather that you accept they are there and chose not to engage with them for a time, choosing instead to focus on something in the here and now. The breath is a simple and controllable thing that we can focus on , noticing the inhale and the exhale, and the little pause that happens in between, and breathing naturally while simply observing without judgement.

This practice offers the brain respite and has been proven to change the brain structure when practiced regularly. These changes can occur in as little as 8 weeks of 10 minutes daily practice. We dedicate that amount of time daily to caring for our oral health, doesn’t it make sense to dedicate time to maintaining our Brain Health as well?

If you’re interested in having me run a Mindfulness Workshop for your Club, Group or Organisation please don’t hesitate to give me a call on 0435 923 817. I can present a number of workshops covering topics such as Stress Reduction in the Workplace, Psychological Well Being, Sporting Performance and the Power of Visualisation and Team Building.

I'm a holistic therapist utilising Clinical Hypnotherapy, Professional Counselling, Pscyhotherapy, NLP, EFT and Mindfulness skills in my practice. My practices is located in Melbournes South East Suburb of Mentone.

My colleague Nina Dewar from In Tune Hypnotherapy in Brunswick has written on Mindfulness and motivation to exercise. Check out her blog post here

​We live in a fast paced Global society..It’s likely that most generations have struggled a little with change; however people currently over the age of 40 have dealt with more rapid change than possibly any generation before. We thought the world was a certain way and we anticipated that change would trickle along in it’s inevitable meandering way as it always had, but then the IT revolution came along and change came in an overwhelming flood. It’s a challenging time for us humans, our technological advancement is outpacing our biological evolution, and we don’t quite know how to bring our ability to adapt unassisted up to speed with it yet.

Struggling to cope..Depression and Anxiety are on the increase as our lives become more and more fast-pace. In spite of all our new on-line social networks, we’re becoming more isolated, and loneliness is becoming a very significant issue. We are constantly on call, slaves to our Smart phones, Parents are running around after kids in ways we would never have dreamed about a generation ago, and we are working longer hours in spite of the promise that technology was going to make all of our lives easier. We feel so swept along by this relentless advancement that we've allowed ourselves to be convinced by marketers that we’re too busy to even prepare nutritious food, resorting instead to ‘convenience’ foods with low nutritional value, that are high in fat’s, sugar and preservatives. That’s a false and limiting belief we've been fed! (pun intended). We can prepare healthy and delicious food just as quickly as we order and wait for a pizza, and what’s more we can enjoy doing it! Just as we realise we shouldn't fill our cars tank with cooking oil to save ourselves the time and bother of going to the petrol station, we need to realise that feeding ourselves properly will save us a whole lot of costly repairs (if indeed we’re repairable) in the long run! We are busy, busy, busy – but for what? Gen Y is expected to be the first generation ever to have poorer health and be less prosperous than their parents!

Therapy can help update and upgrade your coping skills....It doesn't have to be that way. We can step off the frantic merry-go-round and take stock of what’s really important to us as individuals. We can set limits on the time we spend in the office, the number of times we check our on-line devices and we can connect with others. Some small changes we could make may include calling people rather than texting, participating in the community either through volunteering or joining in community activities e.g. sports, classes, clubs etc. We might walk at least part of the way to or from work, or do some exercise at lunch time. We can turn off the TV or the computer and read a book, or go outside. We can learn to practice mindfulness!It is possible to co-exist with technology rather than be submissive to it. We all need to appreciate the fact that our bodies and minds are an incredible, complex and precious finite resource and that we need to look after them. We need to keep our minds and body’s healthy in order to live full and happy lives. Maintaining a healthy weight and ensuring we consume a balanced nutritional diet is key to our quality of life. Eating in moderation and learning to enjoy and appreciate eating that way is key. Sometimes a boost to confidence, some counselling, coaching or help with motivation may be needed in order to make these changes and if you think you need assistance to get your life on track I can provide that assistance! If you struggle to manage stress and anxiety, I can teach skills to make it easier to manage the symptoms and indeed to reduce the impact that external events have on your state of mind. Through Psychotherapy and Clinical Hypnotherapy I can help you harness your own inner resources to build resilience and clearer insight into how you can live your best balanced life.I frequently work with clients to help change their relationship with food and to help them adjust their mindset so that they are more satisfied with smaller portions of quality nutritious foods (Using my tailored Virtual Gastric Band System), once they make those changes the health benefits flow. Tackling the underlying issues of emotional eating, and binge eating is a transformational process that I feel very privileged to accompany my clients along. Using the tailored Virtual Gastric Band System to assist people to make these changes is a very satisfying part of my career. Weight is a complex issue, but the solution doesn't need to be. I work with my clients to simply identify the limiting beliefs that are keeping them stuck and together we remove and replace them with more positive life enhancing beliefs. Clinical Hypnotherapy allows these changes to be made at a deeper and more permanent level than any other therapy I know. You have updates waiting to install.....Our unwanted behaviours occur as a result of deep rooted, old beliefs and patterns that are stuck in a loop in our subconscious mind, the good news is that our subconscious beliefs can be updated with the help of Psychotherapy and Clinical Hypnotherapy. We can update our own internal programs just as our computers can, once we are given the appropriate process instructions. Clinical Hypnotherapy can help you make the changes you want to make; you’re in complete control throughout the process. The therapist helps you to identify the beliefs that drive the behaviours that you want to change, and then while in hypnotherapy you are provided with the tools to make the changes for yourself. You are the critical part of the process!

In Melbourne Hypnotherapy is in increasing demand as Australia begins to catch up with Europe and the US and realise what an effective therapy it is for helping people become unstuck and live the lives they deserve. I'm very proud to be a Melbourne Hypnotherapist and Psychotherapist at this time because together with other members of the Australian Hypnotherapy Association I am part of introducing and promoting the application of this wonderfully effective mode of therapy by properly trained and accredited therapists to people in this Country. I wouldn't be surprised to see Clinical Hypnotherapy being utilised in our Hospitals and Dental Surgeries just as it is in the UK and France in the next couple of years. And to end on a light note......If you think that Clinical Hypnotherapy in Australian Hospitals is a foreign concept I bet you didn't think a few years ago that South Korea would be the epicentre of Popular Culture for the world today, and yet it is! So much so that major US talk show host Conan O'Brien went there to appear in a KPOP video, it doesn't get more fast paced and Global than that! And here it is below in all it's wonderful whacky glory.

There’s an interesting path of research being explored by scientists, doctors and psychologists, it relates to how we define discipline. They believe we need to reshape our approach and by so doing that we’ll rewire our interactions with our children and the subsequent effects. Our parent/child interactions can have a long term impact; as a therapist I see people, sometimes approaching their twilight years that are still living with the consequences of these interactions. We've accepted that spanking is not an appropriate means of discipline, what if we were to consider forgoing another of the old fall-backs of parenthood i.e. time-outs. What is it that can we do instead to ensure we don’t raise a generation that’s out of control? According to research we’ll do a lot better by first understanding how the mind develops and constructing our strategies accordingly. In the early 1990’s Italian neuro-scientist Rizzolatti researched the relationship between intent and action, during the course of his research he discovered that seeing someone else perform an action fires the brain in the same way as doing it yourself, the term “mirror neurons” was born. Consider this when you think about the behaviours you model for your children, by being more aware of what we’re unconsciously teaching our children we may prevent a lot of problem behaviours occurring in the first place, the old adage “do as I say not as I do” doesn't hold up when you understand how their neural pathways are being laid.

Mirror neurons are thought to be responsible for generating empathy and love,In Interpersonal Neurobiology the brain is seen as a social organ, an emotional system that develops relationships similar to the system that processes what our eyes see into something meaningful. This school of thought asserts that by our current methods of disciplining we often end up engaging with our child’s limbic system, which then passes an “under threat” signal to the reptilian brain which in turn takes control with its fight or flight response. In other words the child’s inner primitive self, perceiving a threat makes the child behave in a way that it hopes will make it seem bigger and meaner than the threat it perceives you pose. When your child is under the control of their reptilian brain they cannot learn the lesson you are trying to teach them.

So what to do instead?

We know that if a child associates behaviour with a positive result that they are more likely to want to repeat that behaviour. What if instead of engaging in battle with the reptilian brain we try to address the whole brain, including the nervous systems. Clinical Psychiatrist Dan Siegel (who is the forefather of Interpersonal Neurobiology and Director of the Mindsight Institute) suggests that we accept that the most important and effective means of discipline is not “time-out” but “time-in”, the idea is that parents direct attention inwards to explore emotions and help the children become aware of their inner lives, in effect teach your child Mindfulness.

Try Time-In!Unlike the isolation strategy of Time-Out, Time-In promotes getting in touch with emotions and communication. This practice of mindfulness can occur throughout the day to subtly build up awareness of the minds state of being. With regular practice the child develops clear emotional maps that they can return to when they need to make sense of a more emotional experience such as disappointment when refused something that they want. The child will be aware of their shift in emotional state and be able to articulate their feelings rather than being swept up in them. This is the foundation for emotional intelligence.

Time-Ins don’t have to be formal, they become a natural part of the day; when something of note happens encourage your child to tell their story of it. This helps them process their emotions e.g. if your child is walking on a wet floor & almost slips they may have experienced fright followed by relief, you might say “I got a fright when you almost fell and I was worried, but your face looked so funny when you saved yourself it made me happy” you can then encourage your child to give their version from their experience, this helps them to identify and understand the emotions they experience, however fleeting. It acknowledges that internal emotions are occurring. By doing this in these low drama moments, it becomes easier to identify and relate in high drama moments because they become more in tune. Naming emotions significantly lessens their impact.

*The power of sitting with emotionsUnacknowledged feelings and emotions can become dark and scary places that lead to coping mechanisms to anaesthetise them such as eating or later in life gambling, smoking, doing drugs, drinking etc. These mechanisms can then even be triggered by positive feelings, because any variation in emotional state for someone not in touch with their feelings may trigger a precautionary impulse to seek their anaesthesia of choice. By taking some time to be mindful and observant we can shine a light into those dark recesses. Instead of relying on punishment we can teach our children to self-regulate, and for those of us that didn't learn this skill growing up we can pick it up in the process and improve our own emotional intelligence.

In my practice I regularly work with people to develop these skills using Hypnotherapy and other Psychotherapy techniques and teaching Self-Hypnosis (particularly to people that find the practice of meditation difficult). Some emotions can be buried deep through suppression and the passage of time, it often isn't necessary to re-live a specific event in order to learn to effectively release and deal with the emotion, seeing the weight lifted from clients as they develop this skill and become empowered by it is one of the most satisfying aspects of my job.

I'm a Melbourne Hypnotherapist and Psychotherapist located in Mentone, South East Melbourne. If you'd like further information or would like to book your appointment please call Georgina on 0435 923 817 or use this contact form to get in touch. Skype sessions are available.

Learnt about the power of Mindfulness in our Sandringham Class

Come and join our lovely group in these informal classes. Mindfulness will provide you with the reset you need to regain clarity and tune into yourself.Research shows that just 8 weeks of regular practice of mindfulness leads to physical changes in the brain, reduction in brain atrophy and devlopment of the area of the brain responsible for emotional regulation. They are pretty compelling reasons to invest some time in maintaining your brain.10 minutes a day is all it takes to feel a benefit.

Hope to see you at our classes. If you'd like a private session or to learn the fast track version of mindfulness that is self-hypnosis, which has the added benefit of enabling you to effect personal change, break habits and boost motivation and confidence - give me a call on 0435 923 817 or use the contact form here

Author

Melbourne Hypnotherapist Georgina Mitchell was born in Ireland, moving to Australia in 1989. Georgina Specialises in helping people with Anxiety Disorders and is an active member of the Melbourne Hypnotherapy Community. In Melbourne Hypnosis is being accepted as effective tool for anyone wanting to achieve a positive change in Mood, Behaviour and Habit.

Hypnotherapy Melbourne Reviews for Hypfocus

"Georgina has helped me overcome depression and anxiety so that I was able to finish my course and get a job. I've started going to the gym again which I had previously given up because I felt too self-conscious and couldn't stand being hot. It's really changed my life for the better, I can manage my thoughts and don't have the overwhelming feelings that used to see me spiraling downwards anymore. I've tried other therapies and this was my last resort, I can't recommend her highly enough"

Disclaimer: As with all therapies Hypnotherapy results vary from person to person. This website is not intended as a substitute for medical advice or treatment. The reader should consult their GP for medical advice and for any symptoms that may require medical intervention. The content on this website is for the information of people considering Hypnotherapy at Hypfocus.

Hypfocus Practitioner Georgina Mitchell Is A Member of the HCA

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